Sienna Miller revels in her 'Girl' power

Oct. 18, 2012
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Sienna Miller in character as Tippi Hedren in 'The Girl.' / Kelly Walsh

by Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

by Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

NEW YORK -- Sienna Miller is nestled on a sofa, barefoot and clad in a fuzzy sweater. Her dad has just stopped by, giving his daughter a new cellphone that she has yet to program. Her infant daughter, Marlowe, is asleep in the closed-off bedroom.

It's mom's first day back at the office since hibernating with Marlowe and her father, Miller's fiance Tom Sturridge, in London, and Miller feels a bit discombobulated, but also pleasantly revived.

"I have a great job because my baby can come to work with me. We've been the three of us and that's been fantastic. And now I have to do some work," she says. "I've fortunately hired a nanny. I'm feeding every three hours so I'm still in it. She's a fast feeder. It's fortunate. When she gets older and is in school, we'll work it out. She's the most important thing. I don't want to be anywhere except near her."

At this point, where mom goes, baby follows. And Miller, 30, is in Manhattan promoting HBO's The Girl, which tells the creepily obsessive relationship that legendary director Alfred Hitchcock had with actress Tippi Hedren. She starred in two films for him, 1963's The Birds and 1964's Marnie. After she rejected his advances, he shut down her career.

Playing Hedren, who's still very much alive, was daunting. Even more so? Dealing with Mother Nature. "Being in the first trimester!" says Miller of the shoot. "The biggest challenge was emulating the grace she had. I'm not naturally graceful. And she moved so exquisitely well. I spent a lot of time working on that. She had this incredible mix of austerity and warmth. It was daunting trying to get that right."

Toby Jones, the Hitchcock to Miller's Hedren, calls her "ideal casting. She's someone who is totally the object of press attention, obsession and abuse. Sienna, despite her youth, has had lots of experience dealing with that sort of attention. Thestriking thing about working with Sienna is that she had to grow up so fast in so many ways because she's had attention for often the wrong reasons, but remains enthusiastic and positive. She's unpretentious, very keen to learn, very keen to be supportive."

Miller says that when circumstances call for it, she can be as resolute as Hedren is portrayed to be in the film. "I have my moments. If I was put into a corner, I would be intolerant of that sort of behavior. I can't imagine what it was like, being a woman in that world," she says.

She was certainly self-possessed enough to eloquently testify at the Leveson Inquiry on phone hacking last November. To date, no close-up photos of Marlowe have surfaced in England, and that's no accident. "I have an injunction in England, from years ago. I don't have any paparazzi issues there. I'm feeling so protective (of my daughter)," she says.

Despite her image as precocious, unconventional and perpetually chic, Miller is actually maternal and affectionate in person. She's not a glamazon, not even close, showing off the slightly messy at-home pedicure she just gave herself because newborns and spa days really don't mix. "I did them myself, as you can see. It's not happening yet," she says, of anything resembling a grooming routine. "The sleep deprivation is pretty amazing. I'm still in the thick of it. You're so out of it, you're not even aware of it. We can stumble through together."

When told that she hasn't aged a minute since an interview she did for 2004's Alfie, Miller looks incredulous. "I so have aged in a massive way. I love you for saying that. That's made my year. I have an (expletive)-load of base on. I have these dark things from pregnancy," she says, and then goes one step further.

Miller hoists up her top, revealing an abdomen clad in a flesh-colored girdle. "Check these out. I've got hard-core Spanx on. These go down to your bum and then squash the infamous breastfeeding boobs," she says with a laugh.

And like any proper mum, she demands to see photos of your kid before displaying a few of her own. "She's got proper chunk going on," she says, staring at a cellphone shot of her daughter.